The start of a new phase as a pianist: to give the same concert many times

This autumn will be the start of a new phase of my piano career: one where I will behave a little bit more like a "normal" concert pianist. More specifically: most of the successful ones usually have a single solo program (or at least a single core of a program) which they play in many different cities during a couple of months, perhaps even up to a year. Then they change that program, and go through some updated version of the same cities again, with their new program. This is e.g. what my currently living idols - Yuja Wang and Grigory Sokolov - do, as do many others.

Yuja Wang playing the 24 preludes by Chopin. She first played this in Stockholm earlier this year (I was there to listen), and has since then played this program at least 10 different times in different cities shortly thereafter. She will most likely keep doing this a couple of months, and then move on to some other program. 

The advantage of this way of performing is that you get the chance to play the same program many times, and really get into the depth of the pieces, by refining and diving deeper and deeper into them for each concert - and by polishing sections of the pieces up that you want to improve between each concert. In the last couple of years, I have myself been in a different phase than this: one where I instead have been building up myself as a pianist. I have been making the transition from behaving like a chamber musician, who mostly play together with others, to a soloist, who mostly play solo recitals. As part of this, I have been building up a large collection of pieces that I know more or less by heart, i.e. that I have played at least once or twice by heart in concerts. This learning has also involved a steep growth in other aspects, such as technically (because many of these pieces I have learnt are quite demanding), memory-wise, etc. Nevertheless, this phase of mine is now at its end, and I now have a large enough repertoire, and skill set, to move on to the next phase: the more conventional concert pianist phase. In short, I now feel ready to start bringing these pieces that I already learnt into a more formal and deeper setting - into slightly bigger concerts, and on real tours.

 My big benefit in this compared to most other pianists, is that it will be quite easy for me to start this next phase. I am already travelling enough in my science to fulfill also my desire to tour as a pianist (around 2 months a year, and perhaps 10-15 cities), and all of these travels are already payed for by my work. I have also already started to explore the combination of giving concerts while on science tours, and have started to build up contacts and ideas for how this can happen. The other reason why I expect this to be much easier for me, compared to most other pianists, is that I already have a good income, much better than most pianists in Sweden in fact, and I therefore don't need to think about finding people and venues who can pay me quite substantial amounts of money for this. I just need to find nice places to play, and think of nice creative environments where my music really is desired, where audiences will want to listen. Kind of like I did already with my lunch concerts in Linköping, and with my family soirees, which are two concepts that can be multiplied easily by bringing them to all of the universities and cities that I anyway visit.

The first program that I have put together is actually in itself a dream I have had for many years, 20 years if not more: to play all of Chopin's ballades. These ballades are absolutely wonderful, and quite demanding, so it is really a program of a "grown up" pianist. At least the first half of such a program. Just as an example: "Yundi played these 4 ballades at his solo recital in Stockholm a couple of months ago (before break; after break he played the 24 preludes, which I also played a couple of years ago). After this, in 2018, I plan to move on to a program with 3 new Beethoven sonatas (probably in the Spring), and a program with the title "Baroque and the 21st century" (probably in the autumn). Both of those latter programs will be two-act programs, i.e. they require a break in the middle, and will take in total about 2h, even though shorter versions of course are possible as well.
As part of this endeavor, I have now put together a little flyer and am already in contact with friends and colleagues in several different cities where I will play my ballades, both in the US, UK, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. If you are, or know somebody more who might be, having a nice concert venue and audience where the 4 ballades of Chopin would be appreciated, during the autumn, or where some of the other two programs would fit in during 2018, please feel free to distribute this to them. And if you have comments on how you think that the flyer can be improved, such comments are of course welcome as well :)

A little update and life progress report from...

Gunnar